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Clean Eating: A Step by Step Guide

Clean eating is a huge trend right now: from the inspiring #eatclean hashtags on Instagram to the plethora of cookbooks and apps on the market that deal with all things clean and lean, vegan, raw and wholesome. But what really is clean eating all about? Different experts all have their own unique take on what clean eating means to them, so we’ve picked some of the principles that best sum up our approach to clean eating. For us, eating clean means enjoying whole foods in their most natural state, and limiting processed food and other junk.

Choose Whole Foods

Foods that haven’t been messed with, processed or otherwise manufactured or tampered with. Clean food is straight from the farm: fresh organic produce, whole grains, grass-fed and free-range. Any food with a label has been processed in some way, because a label is for listing ingredients and whole foods are foods in their most naturally-occurring state. If you can’t pronounce an ingredient on the label of your food, leave it well alone. Unless it’s quinoa. Quinoa is good.

Eat Some Processed Foods

So now we’re going to go back on what we just said slightly, and say that it’s ok to have some processed foods. Cheese is processed, so if you’re not following a vegan diet plan then a bit of good quality cheese is fine. As is whole grain pasta: we’d never warn you off a bowl of good pasta unless you had a specific wheat or gluten intolerance. Our delicious raw juices are cold pressed gently so as to not stress the produce or zap it of nutrients through mechanical processes that create heat and oxidization. This gentle process yields nutrient-rich, fresh and delicious raw juices that pack more minerals than juices made in other ways.

Ditch Sugar

Refined sugar is bad news for your health and there’s no place for this junk in a clean eating regime. Refined sugar (the white stuff that’s added to foods rather than the naturally-occurring sugars in fruit) is toxic and tampers with the metabolism, causing weight gain and tooth decay. These sugars contain calories with no health benefits to them, and so they are known as ‘empty calories.’ Fructose – one of the two simple sugars that refined sugar turns into once digested – can damage the liver in large amounts as excessive fructose turns to fat.

Eat Homemade

Cook from scratch at home, pick up your lunch from an organic cafe or let us put together a weight loss meal plan for you that’s bursting with clean, vegan homemade snacks and meals. By eating homemade food, you know that you’re not filling up on additives, and that the food you’re eating has had little more done to it than washing, chopping, sautéing – perhaps a little steaming. No heavy sauces. No sugary fillings. No processing. Just simple, good, CLEAN food.

Do pop in and see us in store, and check out our weight loss plans and raw juice delivery plans online. Got a question about vegan diets, clean eating or our juice cleanse deliveries? Give us a call on 0208 305 9113and we’ll be happy to help.